The Other Side

(Max Adler)

Time and time, over and over, I still get stupefyingly paralytic depression.

I can’t sleep, concentrate, or laugh. I haven’t gone to church in a week (tomorrow — er, in three hours I mean — will make two), gone to any events besides the CCF meeting, or have had the ounce of effort required to do something (laundry, homework).

What is the cause of this? I’ve placed blame on many things — sugar, milk, my mattress, stress, possible autism — but I doubt that any of those have relation to my problem. I think that deep down inside of me, I know that it’s impossible for me to truly be happy (or joyful) when my daily life is met with the constant lies and ignorance being spouted from every mouth I used to respect. I do lose respect for people quite easily, you know. (I very rarely gain respect for people, except for a few in the past year).

And the kicker here is that because I don’t have respect for many people, I trust no one enough to let them help me — or if I still even consider it help. They might ask me what’s going on, but I smile and say lies. I know exactly what to say to fend off their help; growing up in the church helped me with that. I used to think that my faith was sound; unwavering, unfaltering at times. I’d be God’s shining light in the modern day of corruption and wrongness.

But now, I can hardly tell the difference between whether I’m truly a Christian, or I’m simply at church or at meetings just because I’m looking for nice, honest friends to hang out with, because maybe, I’m actually really lonely inside. (Though, if my subconscious were trying to make friends, it would almost certainly avoid making friends with Christians).

Not only that, I’m afraid of being the leecher on the sideline. Sure, I’ve helped out on worship, shown my leadership, but being assertive has only made the real leaders to delegate my complacent peers to lead instead (hah what a letdown from the website business. I don’t even feel that I’m being used anymore). I’m thinking that now, the only reason why I help on the worship team, or strive to serve the fellowship is simply because of an unexplained phenomenon that urges me to contribute back to the community — instead of any passion or love for God.

I see some friends around me in their own strong faiths, battling their sins with the help of the more (so-called) mature Christians. They constantly struggle each day, to my admiration. But recently I can’t understand why they are doing those things anymore. I can see their reason — out of love for God — but I can’t comprehend how they can devote so much, especially since to me, “love for God” becomes “debt to God” and that becomes “obligation to God”. (“Obligation” screams unauthenticity, which you would know bugs me if you’ve read any of my other posts).

Who knows? Maybe this bout will just pass away, like the ones that did a year ago.

Lately, though, they haven’t. I stay up in bed thinking about the grim future of emptiness that I’m setting myself up for, and how helpless I really am to do anything about it.

I spilled hot soup on myself today at Campus Market.

It was the cashier’s fault for having such dreamy eyes.